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Bubbly and Brisket

No food blog would be complete (though I am far from complete here- we’ve only just begun!) without the requisite Valentine’s Day post. I should preface it by saying that there is nothing “romantic” per se about any of the foods that I made tonight, but Valentine’s Day is about doing something special for the ones you love, and this was on the list of Jay’s favourite foods.

As I’ve said before, I was a vegetarian for 10 years, and when I started eating meat again, I stuck only to poultry. As you can imagine, I’ve never had any experience with beef. So tonight’s meal was my first beef meal in 18 years! I was really nervous to try this corned beef recipe- it’s my mother-in-law’s recipe, and it’s Jay’s favourite, so there was a lot to live up to. If I do say so myself, it was a big success! I served it with roasted mini potatoes (which I seasoned with a mix of paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and Italian seasoning) and baked broccoli (sprayed with Pam and seasoned with kosher salt, pepper and lemon zest and baked at 425).

For dessert, I had been thinking about making something rich and chocolatey, but Jay had mentioned a few times in the last little while that he really liked rice pudding (weird, I know), so I decided to give that a go instead. Even though most of the time I refer to Google to find new recipes, I have a great stash of cookbooks, including some of my grandmother’s. This recipe came from one of her’s, Second Helpings Please, but I altered it to make it Parve by using almond milk and dairy-free margarine in place of the milk and butter.

Corned Beef Brisket

One pickled beef brisket (the one I used was roughly 2.2kg- just shy of 5lbs)
1 bottle of BBQ sauce
Maple Syrup (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Place the brisket in a large roasting pan and cover it completely with water. Put a lid on it, and put it in the oven for 2-3 hours, depending on the size of the brisket. I left mine in for 3 hours (checking it a few times to be sure it wasn’t overcooking), and removed it when it was soft enough to put a fork in it and be able to remove the fork smoothly. I left it with the lid on, out of the oven, for about 20 minutes before moving on.

Place the roasting pan in the sink, remove the lid, and run water over the brisket to rinse it in order to remove some of the salt and the pickling seasonings. Since I used a kosher brisket (and kosher meat tends to be must saltier), I soaked the brisket for a while too, and then used the edge of a spoon to scrape off some of the peppercorns.

Remove the brisket from the water, and wash out the roasting pan. After cleaning and drying the pan, line it with tin foil, and place the brisket back in the roasting pan.

Using the BBQ sauce (and maple syrup if you’d like) coat the brisket entirely. I used about 3/4 of a bottle of Diana’s Original BBQ Sauce.

At this point, depending on how close you are to your desired meal time, you can either return the brisket to the oven uncovered, or you can put the lid back on and refrigerate it until about an hour before serving.

If your brisket was refrigerated, preheat the oven to 350 and bake it for about 45-50 minutes, then broil it for an additional 3-5 minutes. If it was not refrigerated, 30 minutes plus the broiling time should be enough.

Remove from roasting pan, slice and serve (Jay likes it with mustard).

Before cooking, cover completely in water.

After boiling for three hours and rinsing

Cover with BBQ sauce before baking

The finished product!

Jay suggested that the title of this post be “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, Yummy- that’s 4 Yummies”